NOTE: Len wrote this article sometime in the late 80s, prior to Ferraris
acquisition of Maserati.

One -- this one at any rate -- does not just pop over to Europe and drop by Ferrari or
Lamborghini or Maserati. It takes some getting there, it takes some planning, it takes a
welcome, it takes some determination and a reason to go. It's not at all like a casual
visit to Notre Dame or the Tower of London. It's more like a request to visit the War Room
at the Pentagon and
settling for a quick tour of the Pentagon cafeteria with that paragon of-truth- and-light,
the Presidential Press Secretary, as a guide.

But I had a nice time, more-or-less. That's the important part, right? Actually, I was
tired and getting more road-weary by the day. I say this not to beg a crumb of sympathy
(who wants crummy sympathy?) but to tell you that there may be some little soupcon of
peevishness in what follows.

I had flown from Los Angeles to the Geneva salon, spent three days trying to catch up
with jet lag and see the show comprehensively, spirited off by Mercedes-Benz for a ten
course lunch at a castle--met Dr. Ing. Wolfgang Peter, head of M-Bz's passenger car
development--then (with the Volvo guys) off to Sicily to drive the new 16-valve 740--very
nice--around the old

Still jet-lagged, and now with permanent low-grade indigestion, off to Frankfurt to
pick up a Volvo Turbo, courtesy Volvo of Germany. Then to Aschafenburg
tovisit--again--theRosso-Bianco collection (about 300 sports-racing cars, heavy on Alfas,
Maseratis, and, of all things, Can-Am cars). Late winter in Europe and the weather, of
course, is miserable--"schnee"they call it, mixed with freezing rain.

Back to Switzerland, Zurich this time, to spend a weekend with friends. Cold, but the
weather is getting better. Tourist stuff. Still waking at two am. Back to the Geneva salon
to see what I missed while I was eating and being a fine fellow. Sausages at the salon
beat our ballpark hot dogs as certainly as a Ferrari Daytona will bring bigger bucks at
auction than a Dodge Daytona. Great moutard too.

OK. The meat of it, so to speak. Tired, indigestion, too much luggage, camera gear,
tape recorder, a growing pile of books, dirty laundry, I drive across and through the Alps
to Italy where it's hot and dry and the sun is almost painful after dim Switzerland and
dark Germany. I have forgotten my sunglasses.

To Torino to visit Lancia, drive the 8-32, see the factory where they are built, big
lunch, visit the Lancia Museum, the Biscaretti Museum, get lost several times, etc. Off to
Modena and Maserati. I have called ahead.

About 300 Words on the History of Maserati

Briefly, there have been four periods in Maserati's history: The Brothers; the Orsis;
Citroen; deTomaso. A fifth seems to be developing. More about that later.

Carlo, Bindo, Alfieri, Ettore, four (of six) Maserati brothers were involved in the
Italian auto industry from its earliest days. Carlo died, the other three established, in
1926, Officini Alfieri Maserati. They built some highly successful racing cars, some
moderately successful cars, some woefully unsuccessful cars, and earned a splendid
reputation. That reputation was certainly not the least of what the Orsi family bought
when they added Maser to their group of companies in 1938.

With the 8CLT, no longer competitive as a GP car, Maserati won the Indy 500 in 1939 and
1940. If not yet a household name here, it was at least beginning to be.

The Orsis oversaw the production of the most famous Masersthe 250F GP car that
Fangio used to win the World's Championship, 150/200/300/450-series sports racing cars
(big-time competition for Ferrari, Aston-Martin, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz), the Tipo 60/61
"Birdcage." They also were present when Maserati produced their first
sort-of-production boulevardiers, beginning with the 3500s. Despite their attempt to
capitalize on the reputation by selling road cars, Maserati was never profitable for the
Orsi empire.

They tried to join the modern world by using the small-tube birdcage construction for
mid-engined cars. Not successful. Cooper used Maser V-12 engines in F1 until 1966/67 with
decreasing success, and that was about it for Maserati in racing.

Citroen, none too healthy itself, took control of Maserati in a complicated deal in
1969. The result was the V6 engine for the SM and the cross-breeding of Citroen hydraulics
into the mid-engined Bora. Later, the SM V6 was used in a simplified Bora to create the
Merak. Peugeot bought Citroen and immediately spun off Maserati--right into the pocket of
Alejandro deTomaso.

"That unhappy period (when deTomaso talked Ford into acquiring a majority of Ghia
stock--1970/73)ended in 1973 when Ford bought deTomaso's 16 per cent shareholding,
announcing that De Tomaso Inc. would henceforth be known as Ghia Operations...

"The fuel crisis had decimated Pantera sales; de Tomaso walked away from the
takeover with the rights to build the Pantera and sell it anywhere outside the United
States. Plus 100 unfinished cars in the Grugliasco (ex-Vignale) plant. As in so many of
his deals, Alejandro had come up smelling of roses..."

from GHIA, The Dream Factory, by David Burgess-Wise, in Classic and Sportscar, April,
1988.

DeTomaso is an Argentine, usually described as a playboy/race driver/industrialist. He
owns the Canalgrande, the best hotel in Modena. He owns, or controls, or has owned or
controlled, DeTomaso Automobili, Ghia, Vignale, Benelli (motorcycles), Moto Guzzi (ditto),
Innocenti (motor scooters, British cars under license, finally the Daihatsu-powered Mini),
and, of course, Maserati.

The automobiles produced under the DeTomaso or Ghia banners all seemed terribly flawed
in one or more ways. Don Kopka, Jack Telnack's predecessor as Ford's VP of Design,
remembers that during the very difficult gestation period of the DeTomaso Pantera,
Alejandro himself was asked about a rear suspension problem, to which he replied,
"what do I know about that, I'm just an artist." And inevitably, when listening
to the complaints of design staff that same day--they found the Pantera's interior
seriously deficient--replied, "what do I know of that, I'm only an engineer."

In fact, more than anything else, DeTomaso seems to be a magician,a financial
prestidigitator, and very, very lucky after all.

The Maserati Works at Last

It was one of those painfully bright days mentioned above when I arrived at Maserati's
Modena plant. The place is neat enough from the outside. Big Maserati tridents are worked
into the crowns of the fence, but it's the only sign that anything exceptional is taking
place inside.

The plant manager is busy, wears a beeper on his belt. He's a young, clean-cut
engineer-manager type, the kind of guy one might see working for IBM or EDS, BS in
engineering, MBA, etc. He doesn't offer me a card and I don't ask for
one."Probably," he says, you would like to talk with Corghi."

The factory is busy but not too busy. It's a reasonably modern, undistinguished factory
that could be producing any reasonably modern, undistinguished industrial product
in moderate quantities. What do we expect--native craftsmen tugging at forelocks and
hammering light alloy panels over sandbags and tree stumps, or filing and scraping away at
rough castings to produce Bugatti-like works of art?

There are some approximations of that antique system still remaining in Italy, and I'm
sure in other places as well, but I can assure you that all of the great names, the
automotive icons, are built with modern machine tools operated by workers who are more
concerned with cementing their positions in the bourgoise than in producing great
automotive art.

Not all of the Maserati stuff is done there in Modena. Zagato (Milano) gets credit for
the Spyder (and presumably the new Karif) bodies, some of the development work is done
across Modena at the DeTomaso digs, the Innocenti operation (which, with a little help
from a part of the Italian government that concerns itself with full employment, DeTomaso
acquired from the British), also in Milano, has metal pressing and foundry operations.
Transmissions, steering, brakes, differentials, turbos, electronics, injection systems,
upholstery, all come from other sources--common enough even with much larger companies.

The Modena plant is finishing the assembly of Zagato Spyders and machining stacks of
lovely engine castings. What is it that allows the Italians to make these eternally
beautiful engine parts? "Corghi should be here any minute," says the plant
manager.

The line that produces the finished Spyders was either not moving at all, or moving at
an imperceptible crawl. There were workers around them but not much seemed to be
happening. The machining operations, largely done on most modern, multi-head milling
stations, seemed almost as slow. Maserati has plans to produce 6000 Biturbos (and
variations) this year--1400 of them for the US--but there are plans and plans.

There were about a hundred new cars parked behind the plant--possibly my error, but
they looked like they had been there some time. The plant manager was busy but I never
could quite see what it was that was occupying him. The beeper would go off, he would go
off. After the machinery, and telling me several times that such-and-such an operation was
performed elsewhere, there wasn't much left. "Signore Corghi seems to be running
late."

About that time Santiago DeTomaso, son of Alejandro and Isabel Haskell DeTomaso showed
up. Santiago's role in the far-flung DeTomaso enterprises seems a little vague, but he did
have the corporate line down with the same confusing exactitude as his father.

An example of the Corporate Line: when DeTomaso (the father) was asked about Japanese
automotive penetration in Europe in general and Italy in particular, he misquoted the
import figures (minimizing the Japanese impact) then suggested that the miniscule sales of
Japanese cars in Italy was a result of something other than the specifically restrictive
Italian import laws (after WWII the Italians entered into an agreement with the Japanese
to trade imports car-for-car, all at the behest of the Japanese who were afraid that the
Fiat 500 would bury the Japanese auto industry forever. The law is still in effect.).

All of this inevitably lead DeT. into a diatribe about the souless Japanese cars and
how they would never gain a foothold in Italy or the rest of Europe...without once
mentioning that Innocenti Minis--the Bertone redesign of the original BMC Mini-Minor, had
been using Daihatsu engines for some time. Santiago, a little less forcefully, makes the
same assertions, sometimes the same statements, as his father.

DeTomaso is, almost by default, the largest big-displacement motorcycle manufacturer in
Italy, but the souless Japanese outsell him handily. I have never heard him mention it.

I had been asking about the new Maser 228 and now asked Santiago. Like his father, he
has a certain charm, a certain reputation as a ladies' man. Santiago is better looking
than his father, medium-sized, appears to be in his mid-thirties, maybe a bit older, dark
hair just beginning to grey. He was wearing a dark chalk-striped suit that was just
bagging at the knee, just a little loose in the cuff. The effect, somehow, the smile, the
mannerisms, reminded me just a little of Charlie Chaplin. Unlike his father, he declines
having his picture taken.

"The 228," he is telling me ,"is a whole new kind of car." The 228,
in fact, seems to be a slightly enlarged Biturbo with the corners rounded. It is supposed
to sell in the $50,000 range, but I'm not sure to whom. He tries to explain further about
the indefinable, the qualitative differences between the 228 and other cars. His English
is excellent. I thought mine was too. I don't understand him.

I change the subject, ask him about Maserati's assumption of all US distribution and
what happened to Kjell Qvale's operation. Qvale had been responsible for distribution of
most of the British cars on the west coast during the `sixties and `seventies, then bought
Jensen and had the Jensen-Healey designed and assembled. He then took on Maserati
distribution for the western US, and the job of making the Biturbo into what most people
thought it was supposed to be from the beginning. Lee Meuller was hired to massage the
suspension, Spearco supplied dual water-air intercoolers, suggestions were made about trim
and paint...it was an attempt to re-engineer the car 7000 miles away from its place of
manufacture. I had talked with the engineers who were actually doing the work (most of it
adopted by the Maserati-owned eastern distributor), with Bruce and Jeff Qvale, Kjell's
sons, who were actually in charge of the operation, and finally with some owners.

Santiago claimed that Bruce and Jeff were just too inexperienced, not commited enough
to what he made sound a little like a religious crusade. I talked with Jeff sometime after
meeting with Santiago, and he reminded me that, with his older brother, he had grown up in
the imported car business, and that they were supposed to be businessmen, so that when the
lawsuits and red ink begin to outweigh the rewards, it was time to rethink. The Qvale's
still own a couple of Maserati dealerships.

There seems to be an intentional mist surrounding the DeTomaso version of Maserati. The
original reputation was made by the Brothers strictly on the marque's ability to
raceand win--against the Bugattis and Alfas that were its competition. The same was
true of the Orsi-built cars, substituting Ferrari, Porsche, and others for competition.
That's where the magic reputation came from. DeTomaso (the elder) has said categorically
that he will not re-enter racing. There was one attempt to race a Biturbo in a 24 hour
race in the US a few years ago which lead to the "how do you spell handgrenade in
Italian? (B-i-t-u-r-b-o)" joke, and nothing since. "Corghi is coming."

The DeTomasos seem to want to keep people from looking too closely while they produce
some substance to go along with the name, the reputation, of Maserati. There have been
infusions of money from Chrysler--remember that DeTomaso and Iacocca have been friends
since at least the late `sixties, the beginnings of the Pantera. Some of those modern
machine tools, some R&D equipment, some warehouse space, a modern paint line, have all
bolstered Maserati's ability to produce cars that justify the reputation. Chrysler has
been accepting Maserati stock warrants as collateral for the loans and to date they own
about 15% of the Maser stock.

As more Chrysler dollars roll into Maserati to help produce the TC, and Maserati
assigns more warrants, Chrysler's share in Maserati will increase. Although I have been
unable to find anyone inside Chrysler or Maserati to address it directly, there is a
better than even chance that Chrysler will own Maserati outright in the next few years.
"Corghi is here."

Signore Corghi is tanned, compact, muscular, older than Santiago. He is a development
engineer with obvious hands-on experience. He has spent time in the US and has great
disdain for: US drivers, automotive journalists, seatbelts, speeds under 150 kph. Not
necessarily in that order.

We are to drive a new 430i ("4" for doors,"30" for 2.8 liter
version of the Biturbo's 3-valve alloy dual turbo V6, "i" for fuel injection).
There is some confusion about what it is we are really in--I would like to have driven the
Karif (the 94" Spyder wheelbase with the hottest--285 bhp--version of the 2.8 liter
V6) and it now appears that in the four door, we are using the same 102" wheelbase as
the 228, possibly the same engine as the 228--why call it 228and 430?--225 bhp. The 430 is
about 400 lbs lighter than the 228, but we're carrying three people. I move toward the
driver's seat but "Corghi will drive."

Corghi assures me that the 430 will be somehow representative of the Karif. It's late
in the afternoon as we drive out through the plant gates and onto the narrow roads that
lead toward the local autostrada. As far as I can see, the 430 is not too different than
the 425 that I tested a couple of years back, save that this one has the ZF 5-speed (with
low out of the pattern), and that one had the ZF automatic and .3 liter less displacement.

I ask Corghi why Maserati seems to be using an old BMW chassis set-up with its rear toe
change, camber change, and roll steer problems. He doesn't really answer. He's stirring
the tiny ZF shift lever with two fingers and we're moving smartly off of the narrow
streets onto a kind of frontage road. Traffic, in our direction, is moving about 70 kph,
tightly packed, headed in the direction of the autostrada.

Maserati's BMW-plus rear suspension misbehaviour, a result of having the rear ride
height somewhat higher than prudence dictated, overlayed onto BMW's trailing throttle
oversteer characteristics, produced really vicious results for the unwary. For a good
driver who knew what to expect, the Maser's additional on-boost torque (compared with a
BMW 320/318/325) could force breakaway at low speeds and the rsult was like throttle
steering a nose heavy solid axle car--up to a point. Corghi didn't seem very concerned
with any of this. There is a possibility that the Biturbos for America are the only one
with the enhanced ride height.

We are accelerating up through 100 kph past 120, 140, coming up on traffic very
quickly, Corghi, two fingers on the shapely wooden shift knob shifted across the gate up
from third to fourth, up past 150 kph and onto the left side of the four lane feeder road.
We are passing solid lines of traffic on our right now...up an overpass, blind to oncoming
traffic, Corghi is calm, still has two fingers on the shift knob, we are still
accelerating. Just past the brow of the overpass, traffic approaching. I can see the eyes
of the driver in the oncoming Fiat Brava. We are, of course, in his lane. Our closing
speed is something like 240 kph (call it 150 mph).

As if it were prearranged, the Brava moves to his right, our left, and its driver
doesn't even look at us as we pass. We are now facing an Uno at something under 240
closing speed, but the result is exactly the same. An OM bob-tail is passing an Iveco
semi, both blowing black diesel smoke and completely filling up the road. Traffic on the
side that we are supposed to be on is still solid.

Corghi uses his right thumb and forefinger to ease the lever back to third while
braking and moving to our right back across the center line, two fingers, back up to
second, and forces his way between a Lancia Y10 and a Fiat Regata. There is about as much
emotion displayed (by Corghi) as the average commuter shows leaving his drive in the
morning.

Out onto the autostrada he two-fingers it up through the gears, full boost from the
dual IHI turbos, shifting at 6000, smoothly cuts left-right-left, splits traffic creating
a lane, until we're indicating about 250. Corghi takes his fingers off of the shift knob
and points quietly at the speedometer. Finally we back down, move right, and take an exit,
still in our private lane, passing a single lane of cars leaving the road.

We are back onto another frontage road, still on the wrong side, passing considerably
lighter traffic. Corghi smoothly takes a line that leads him onto the right side of the
road while turning right at the same time, and into a parking lot. We trade places. Corghi
says, "I never use the seat belts, but now I make an exception." He buckles
himself in and off we go. The 430 is much faster than the 425 back in the `states.
Handling seems much more stable. There is none of the low-speed high-torque breakaway, no
excess camber change, no excessive squat or dive. I make mention of this to Corghi.

He says, "we have improved it but there never was a problem." I have been
driving on the secondary road, taking turns as Corghi directs. Once, forgetting that low
is outside the H-pattern, I attempt to move off in second. Corghi sighs loudly, says,
"we might as well go back now."

Back at the plant I busy myself trying to take pictures of the car with the factory
buildings in the background. A young man approaches me and asks in eastern US-accented
English whether I have just bought the 430 that I'm photographing. I explain what I'm
doing there and he launches into a litany of complaints with the dealer who sold him the
car, the distributor in Maryland and the Biturbo itself. " How long are turbos
supposed to last?" he's asking me when I spot Corghi coming out of the plant to
reclaim his car.